Time to kill off this dead tax

The row about the Queen Mother's will rumbles on. Although various esoteric reasons are brought forward to explain why it should remain a secret, and why the Queen should be exempt from inheritance tax, to many of us the matter seems a bit rum. If the Queen agreed in 1992 to pay income tax, why should not her tax affairs be placed on the same basis as everyone else's?

It would surely seem sensible to recognise that the Head of State is a special case. The Crown Jewels, for example, can hardly be said to "belong? to her as an individual. Stocks and shares, or her privately owned estates at Sandringham, or racehorses are a different mater.

It is not beyond the wit of good accountants and lawyers to work these things out. Why the secrecy?

Meanwhile, rumours circulate that the Queen Mother's personal fortune was in the tens of millions, and yet none of this will be taxable. Rather than making this an occasion for wheeling out the guillotines and attacking the Royal Family, however, wouldn't this be the moment for an enlightened government to say that inheritance tax is itself an iniquity?

We see the practicality of purchase tax, value added tax and all these stealth taxes imposed on us while we live. And many of us think it is perfectly fair that those with high salaries should contribute to the welfare state by paying lots of income tax.

But why should the Government be allowed to confiscate - for this is what it amounts to - a family house, its books, pictures and belongings, simply because a parent has died? Why shouldn't parents be allowed to hand on their possessions and money to their children? John Major constantly hinted, when Prime Minister, that he would abolish inheritance tax.

Come on, Gordon Brown - do so now, as a present to us all in the Jubilee Year.

Blind Date has long passed its sell-by date

We all stopped watching Blind Date years ago. It became too obvously a vehicle for show-offs who simply wanted to be on telly. Any vestige of hope that the contestants were truly looking for a mate was destroyed when they made each "date" the opportunity for a mini-holiday documentary. And the rudeness of the young people to one another when the date failed to ignite passion was also painful to behold.

It's a surprise to learn that the programme is still going. Apparently, the programme makers are looking round for a new presenter, believing that Cilla is past her sell-by date.

She always was - that was part of the show's kitsch charm when it began. Better to scrap the whole programme and have a better idea.

Here's why we mustn't put Mo on a pedestal

Anthony Powell, in his immortal journals, notes how often buffoonery in England is used as a mode of advancement. Mo Mowlam's memoirs defied even the parodists and satirists. Her sense of her own lovability, irrepressible charm, lack of self-importance is limitless. Having failed in her political career, she is now accentuating the buffoonery.

In a TV programme to be shown tonight, those with a taste for such things will be able to watch Mo and Ruby Wax discussing the wacky ex-Northern Ireland Secretary's oh-so-unconventional life and times. She admits to having been a teenage shoplifter. She repeats her claim that she used to smoke dope in "the 1960s". She larks about, wearing a G-string on her head.

What jolly fun. Isn't it odd that anyone took this conceited ass seriously for a moment?

And yet only a few years ago, Tony Blair was prepared to place the most delicate and important political negotations facing this country in her hands.

It was not her blatant Republican bias which made her a hopeless Northern Ireland Secretary. Many of us hoped that, after years of allowing the Unionists their own way, the Republicans would be allowed a voice. The real trouble was that Mo appears to have been too lazy to be a proper politician. She did not master the small details and the paperwork, hoping to get by with her famous charm. Hugging, and boasting about your groovy student past and walking about barefoot is not really a substitute for hard work when it comes to running a government department.

She is, in many ways, rather like the tiresome Ruby Wax. They are both talentless show-offs who interpret the disgust that they inspire in others as stuffiness. Wax at least has some - not much, but some - in the way of comedic gift. Mowlam's comedy is all unintentional. When her publishers signed her up for a huge advance, she was still a figure on the political scene.

It will be interesting to know how soon Mo's book reaches the remainder tables in the bookshops. It is an all but unreadable series of ego-trips. We should try to remember that it is only very recently that all opinion polls discovered that this woman was the most popular politician in England. I don't know what this says either about politicians or about the English; but it can't say much.

Keep on publishing and be damned

The publishers of Lord Byron and John Betjeman, of Darwin and Jane Austen, of Freya Stark - and even on occasion of A.N.Wilson - John Murray, have decided that they can no longer compete in the harsh world of the modern book trade. The oldest independent publisher in the world has decided to sell out to Hodder Headline.

I wonder what will happen to the lovely old house in Albemarle Street, which until living memory was not only the office but the house of the Murray family? The drawing-room, where a prudish John Murray burnt Lord Byron's memoirs in the grate, is one of the most charming rooms in central London. Sitting there editing one's book at a highly-polished breakfast table, with the portraits of Byron et al gazing down from the walls was an unforgettable experience.

It seems desperately sad that all this should come to an end. John Murray is said to be getting more than £20 million from the new deal. Wouldn't it have been braver for the publishers to take this sum from a bank and see if they could not compete as a small house, such as Bloomsbury, attracting good authors with proper money, and paying to promote their books?

If they then failed, they would have died an honourable death. To be merged with something called Hodder Headline does not seem very glorious to me.